Friday, October 29, 2010

No, no snow here yet. As much as I love it when it snows, it still feels a bit early...

But I did hear from Mum & Dad that they did have snow for the first time the other day!! That is SUPER early. Another month from now would still be pretty early. It didn't stay, but still, it DID snow. Madness! LOL!

Ready for some wintery cuteness? The main kit I used was this super sweet pastel coloured winter kit called Winter Magic by Kay Miller. Aren't those dressed bunnies just so sweet? I think I must use them some other time too :)

Weekend time soon. So nice :) Today I'm catching up on a journalling class I'm taking by Shimelle at the moment and also getting some house related things done (clothes washing, some general tidying etc) amongst other things.

Think we might start on the Christmas present shopping this weekend. Would love to have it done early to avoid crazy queuing for car parks and mad crowds in the shops...

Monday, October 25, 2010

We don't really celebrate Halloween as such. Okay we have a little pumpkin light and we get some candy in for the day, ready for the knocks on the door. And I love to make some Halloween cards - displayed in the living room they kinda add a bit of a Halloween decoration feel. But that's about it...

So I sat down and played a bit with some digital Halloween kits. Making some hybrid cards. This is one of the kits that I fell for...

It's made by Kaye Winiecki and it's available at the Lilypad. I picked a few elements from this kit to work with and a few from another one and came up with this card:

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Thanks for all the sweet comments that you have left for me - I really appreciate it! Seriously, every single one is so appreciated. Today I'm back in my usual trying-not-to-think-about-it-mood. Makes no sense panicking about things you have no control over... Or so I try to tell myself LOL!

So what are these "winter greetings" all about that's mentioned in the title? Well, it's not winter here but a very dark and rainy autumn day... However I have been scrapping with the most super cute winter kit ever. A collab between Lliella Designs and Kay Miller:

Isn't it too cute? And I totally love the colour combinations used for the kit too! For me it's definitely a kit I could not resist.

I had some extra fun too as I decided to make hybrid cards yesterday. Something I haven't done for ages since I got fed up of how quickly I went through my printer ink. But I had so much fun doing this yesterday :)

Thursday, October 21, 2010

I feel a little... deflated today. I had an appoitment at the eye hospital again. It's an ongoing battle and I suffer a lot with it, but I don't mention it too much on here because... well, let's face it, it would be pretty boring to read...

Anyway, my left eye especially keeps causing me problems (eye lid sticks to eye surface (cornea) while I sleep, and occasionally in the day time too, and rips part of it off. V-E-R-Y painful and lots of sideeffects etc). The result of todays appointment is that they recommend another operation. *sigh* They said I should go home and think about it. In either case I won't do it before Christmas (due to recovery etc) but I can't help thinking that some time in 2011, sooner or later, it's operation time again. And earlier if my pain attacks become more frequent...

An operation I really don't want to have. Not even think about. It's... terrible. And the recovery is... even worse. I've said before, that I would not wish this on my worst enemy. Which is true. It's also true that I can't find words enough to describe the pain of the recovery. But then again the pain of the frequent attacks is severly bad as it is...

So I feel a little (lot) deflated today. I'd hoped there would be no more eye operations now that both eyes have been done. Not so it seems. *sigh* Plus it takes about 6 months (!) for my sight to recover afterwards... Not to mention that I won't even be allowed to use water (and nothing else) on my face without boiling it first, I'll have to give up the gym/swimming and I won't even be allowed to wash my own hair...

I try my best not to think about these things. To take my millions of eyedrops per day (well, like 10-ish), my antibiotics etc and just get on with it. But then on days like this you kinda get reminded. Reminded that the doctors can't say what will happen, they don't know how to cure it (only how to treat it and try and keep it managable). And most of my questions get answered with "we really can't say, it's different from person to person, it's impossible to know etc".

If I think about it too much I will panic, freak out and get sad. So I avoid that. But today, no matter how hard I try, I can't help feeling a little tiny bit sorry for myself (I know I shouldn't). So tomorrow I'm going to try and have fun. Just for me. Maybe do some scrapping. Maybe play with some Copic colouring. Lots of greens and glitter would be good...

On Saturday we were out driving. Heading from Liverpool in the Blackpool direction and came across a "point of interest" sign saying: Formby Point. Having no idea what it was, we just decided to follow it. It lead us to a National Trust area and a great place for forest walks and a beautiful beach. :) A perfect place for a break and a nice walk. More photos to be scrapped of this another day... :)

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Are you doing a Christmas album this year? Have you started thinking about it yet? Maybe even got started on the basics or gathered some supplies?

It's been on my mind quite a bit lately. I recently got this Christmas album which I *might* be using...

I really like the shape of the album and also the pages it already comes with (a mix of pretty patterned papers, transparencies and felt pages). I also think (as long as I try and not really add bulky embellishments) that the binder rings will be big enough to hold 31 pages. But I'm not sure...

It's down to either using that album or to make my own covers (which I have done every year so far). It's 8x8 inches and that's a bit bigger than I normally like to work with for my Christmas album. I normally favour the rectangular format too...

I usually vary the size and format for the pages in my album. Having said that, there's nothing stopping me adding some smaller pages, rectangular pages, envelopes etc in this album...

Me thinks I need to think a bit more about this. What would you have done if you were me? What are *you* doing...? :) I'd love to hear! :)

Friday, October 15, 2010

Blogging early today as my parents should be arriving from Sweden in only a few hours. Sooo looking forward to the weekend :)

I guess it's pretty appropriate to blog this layout today as it's photos from a trip which we took with my parents to Germany not this summer but last. The top photo is taken in Germany at a Greek restaurant (eating outside) and the bottom photo on the ferry between Trelleborg-Travemünde.

The papers I have used are mainly Making Memories (I believe... unless I'm not remembering this correctly LOL!) some old Doodlebug paper frills and Bazzill card cut with Nestabilities.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Between tidying and preparing the house for guests this weekend (my parents are coming over from Sweden to visit! Yay - I'm so excited and happy!!!) I've been playing with my new Martha Stewart Score Board for short times here and there.

Following the imperial (why oh why can't everyone use metric? LOL!) measurements to make a 6x6 inch box, I started off with two sheets of 12x12 cardstock. As it was a Christmas box I picked one green and one red sheet, deciding that the base of the box would be green.

The Score Board is really clever and it's so easy to make the lid that tiny, tiny bit bigger so it fits perfectly over the box.

I wanted the box a little more "designed" than just a plain box. So I brought out some pretty snowflake stamps and white StazOn ink.

After having used a selection of the snowflake stamps, I went around the outside edges with a pretty Martha Stewart snowflake border punch.

And here is the box all finished and put together! Since it was my first box, I just followed the instructions as they were given. I think if I was to make a second box (and I had a different coloured and/or patterned card for the base), I might make the lid edges slightly shorter so that you see the base more.

Of course I took some time to do the stamping and the border punching, which was totally extra, but if you don't count these steps this box was SUPER fast to make :)

Monday, October 11, 2010

... so long for the Martha Stewart Score Board! For weeks, I've tried searching on-line, using various search engines and forums. All on-line shops I could find showed the item as "out of stock"...

A bit strange that I couldn't find it anywhere. But I figured it was just really popular and hopefully people would get it back in stock. Then I found out that it had actually been withdrawn due to some patent issue. Now it made sense why it seemed impossible to get it. So on Friday I gave up hope...

Then we went to a craft shop on Saturday. I was looking at the Martha Stewart border punches (which I love!) and Ross suddenly said "Didn't you want the Martha Score Board...?" And I'm like "Yeah....What...Why...?" And hidden below the rows of punches was indeed a Martha Score Board!!! I would never have spotted it myself as the punch rows came out and nearly covered it (and I was totally absorbed in looking at border punches). It went straight in my basket (I was happy to give up some other stuff to get this instead) and all the way home I was like ---> "I got it! I GOT IT!! Yay!"

I'm sooooo pleased! It works for cards, envelopes, boxes... and probably more things which I'm yet to discover. Between tidying and washing windows this morning I have played with it and made some cute patterned paper envelopes :) Can't wait to explore it more...

Saturday, October 09, 2010

I'm off to have the flu vaccine in a bit so I better hurry this post a little - sorry!

I just wanted to share with you this kit by Lliella Designs. Slightly unusual theme (for a scrapbooking kit I mean) of cooking. However I'm sure we all have cooking/food related photos in our photo libraries, don't we?

And this is the layout I came up with using the kit the other day. I always love it when I get to use Kraft cardstock - yay!

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Earlier in the week I got a new tool to play with. Sew Easy by We R Memory Keepers...

I was a little unsure about it before I bought it... but in the end I decided to gamble. I always like sewing on layouts and since my sewing machine is so unreliable it should really be on the tip (if someone can recommend a good reliable one to a decent price, please leave a comment!), I figured I'd give this a go.

When it arrived I played with it a bit on scrap card. Just to practice, to see how easy I found pushing it in a straight line (no problem for me at all) and just generally to get the hang of how much pressure to use etc. Of course also to test out the different heads/patterns :)

I then ventured onto a layout (which I have yet to finish as I'm playing with my Copics and Christmas images at the moment)...

I really enjoyed the sewing and it's great that you can just use ordinary embroidery floss once the colours run out that I got with the Sew Easy kit too :) I also love how you can make different sewing patterns (using your imagination and there are also some suggestions supplied) for each lot of holes/patternhead.

After the first play I can say that I really like this tool so far and think I will get a lot of use out of it :)

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Yay I have finally found something that will store my Copics. :) But before I go on, I just wanted to say thanks to Paula, who also suggested some great storage for Copics... only I had bought mine when I saw your comment Paula. If I hadn't found this, I would probably have gone for your suggestion as getting the Color Cubbies from the US would have cost a fortune! Anyway...

Went shopping yesterday and found this great storage for my Copics...

I love the fact that each compartment has space for more markers to be added (as I'm sure they will with time, birthday, Christmas etc) and also that I have 4 spare compartments at the top. These will come in very useful for re-inkers, which I will be ordering my very first ones of later today. Need to refill my reds. Think I coloured too many Santas last year and now they are running a little low LOL! :)

I'm so pleased to finally have my markers sorted. They are each sorted by colour family. So all blues (B) together, all blue-greens (BG) in another compartment, all greens (G) in the next and so on. Feels great and will of course be very handy when looking for a certain shade.

It's funny how a different container can make your markers look so much more or less. My previous container was full, so it looked like I had "loads of markers". In this storage it suddenly looks a lot less LOL! Anyway, birthday is coming up next month and I know something I will wish for...

Finally I'm leaving you with a baby card I made with a cute little elephant (stamp: Maya Road). My sister had a little baby boy last week :) "En Pojke" = "A Boy" in Swedish.

Okay I'm off to do some colouring with my Copics... Feels soooo great to have them sorted and stored handy on my desk :) I'm a very happy girl :)

Sunday, October 03, 2010

I have to show you this cute cat kit that Kate Hadfield has released this weekend. She's a guest designer at Catscrap this month so, unlike most of her kits, this one can not be found at the Lilypad. The kit is called Here Kitty Kitty (great name!) and looks like this:

Loving cats, and hoping Kate would make a doodle cat kit some time, I totally had to scrap with this kit asap :)

Is the weather as terrible where you are? This must have been the darkest, worst weather week I can think of for a loooong time. Only two days (Thursday and Saturday) have we had what I would consider to be "proper daylight". The other days (inc today) haven't ever gone light. It's been soooo dark, cloudy and misty. Plus lots and lots and LOTS of rain. It just doesn't stop. Hopefully next week will be lots better as I could do with some nice light :)